Plane Crash Kills Polish President: A Blow to Russia-Poland Relations

A firefighter walking near some of the wreckage at the crash site where Polish President Lech Kaczynski, his wife and some of the country's most prominent military and civilian leaders died Saturday April 10, 2010.

The president of Poland was killed in a plane crash on Saturday in
western Russia, setting off a new cycle of grievances between Russia
and Poland on a day that was supposed to serve the cause of
reconciliation between them. President Lech Kaczynski, his wife and
some of his top security officials were among the 96 people killed in
the crash. As the fuselage of the Soviet-made Tupelov airplane (operated by a Polish airliner) still
smoldered in forest near the city of Smolensk, the grim irony of their
deaths became clear to the stunned Polish nation: Their president had
been on his way to Russia to commemorate the massacre of tens of
thousands of Poles, who had been executed on the order of Soviet
dictator Josef Stalin in 1940 in those same forests in the region of
Smolensk. (Read a TIME story on Poland and Russia.)

Blame for the crash has fallen on the pilot, who reportedly ignored
warnings from air traffic control and tried to land on Saturday
morning in dense fog, snagging the tail of his plane on a tree about a
mile from the airport. "The pilot was advised to fly to Moscow or
Minsk because of heavy fog, but he still decided to land. No one
should have been landing in that fog," an air traffic control official
told Reuters, indicating that recklessness may be behind the tragedy.
Russian law enforcement officials said they had opened an
investigation, and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called to express his
condolences to Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who reportedly wept upon
hearing of the catastrophe on Saturday.

Kaczynski, who became Poland's president in 2005, had been a
dogged critic of Putin and Russia's efforts to restore influence over
the former Soviet Union. He sparred with the Kremlin over the bans
Russia imposed on Polish food imports in recent years, calling them
part of a strategy of political blackmail and manipulation. In 2006,
he even proposed that the European Union impose sanctions on Russia
for its economic bullying in Eastern Europe. His animosity had deep
roots. In 1980, he spent nearly a year in prison for "anti-socialist"
activities when the Moscow-backed communist government imposed martial
law in Poland. After his release, he became a leader of the
underground Solidarity movement that campaigned for democratic reform,
helping to topple the communist regime. (See pictures of the Buffalo, N.Y. plane crash in 2009.)

One of the key initiatives of his career was to achieve greater
openness and recognition from Russia about the massacre of Polish
officers by the Soviet secret police in 1940. He insisted that the two
countries could not build normal ties without achieving reconciliation
over these crimes. On Wednesday, Putin made an unprecedented gesture
of good will on this issue, becoming the first Russian leader ever to
commemorate Stalin's mass executions of Poles alongside a Polish
leader. Prime Minister Tusk had flown in to Smolensk that day for the
ceremony in the village of Katyn, where most of the 22,000 political
murders were carried out by Stalin's NKVD secret police, a forerunner
to the KGB.

After the ceremony, which marked the 70th anniversary of the killings
at Katyn, Putin gave a controversial explanation of why Stalin had
ordered them. He said Stalin was seeking revenge for the death in 1920 of Red
Army soldiers in Polish prisoner of war camps, where around
32,000 troops under Stailn's command who had been captured by the Poles
died of hunger and disease. "It is my personal opinion that Stalin
felt personally responsible for this tragedy, and carried out the
executions [of Poles in 1940] out of a sense of revenge," Putin said
at a press conference. He also disappointed many in Poland by failing
to call the massacres a war crime or to pledge that the perpetrators'
names, which are now sealed in Russia's secret archives, would finally
be opened to the Poles.

But for most people in Poland and in Russia, Wednesday's ceremony with
Tusk was still seen as a remarkable step forward in the process of
reconciliation. President Kaczynski was due to arrive on Saturday for
another ceremony along with a delegation of more than 80 Polish
officials and relatives of the victims of the Katyn massacres. "I hope
I get a visa," Kaczynski had joked when announcing the visit. As part
of the ceremony, he was due to receive an urn of soil from the forests
were the thousands of Polish officers had been executed with a bullet
to the base of the neck.

The horrific irony of the crash that cut short this visit was not lost
on officials in Russia, who expressed their shock and grief over the
incident. "The soul can only shudder from the realization that Katyn
has claimed more victims," said Konstantin Kosachyov, head of the
foreign affairs committee of Russia's parliament. Mourners in Warsaw
had already begun to gather by the presidential palace on Saturday to
lay flowers and light candles. The political impact of the crash will
likely be felt in Poland for years to come.

Under the constitution, new presidential elections will have to be
held, and replacements will also need to be found for the chief of
Poland's military and the deputy minister of foreign affairs, as well
as scores of other officials who were on that flight. How the tragedy
will effect relations between Poland and Russia will depend a lot on
how Russia handles the investigation of the crash alongside Polish
authorities. For his part, Putin is traveling to Smolensk on Saturday
to help oversee the inquiry and meet with Tusk, who has also said he
is coming to the scene of the crash. But whatever the investigators
find among the wreckage, Poles will now have yet another tragic reason
to mourn their countrymen in the forests around Katyn.